Waltz Macabre

by Mary Bowers

  “What priest?”

  “You know – Henry II muttering about Thomas Becket.”

  “No, I don’t know. What do they have to do with anything?”

  “Henry was grousing about Becket, and some of his knights overheard him. They went off and murdered Becket, thinking it would curry favor with Henry. Instead, it turned into a disaster. Something of that kind might have happened when the love triangle developed between Phoebe, Garrison and Barclay. Cary Jessop decided to do Garrison a favor and kill his rival, and it backfired. All he’d done was to ruin his friend’s reputation forever. It might have even soured things between Phoebe and Garrison after they did get married, if she began to be suspicious of him.”

  “Well, if that’s what happened, whether or not he knew what Cary was going to do, Garrison stood by him afterwards.” I shuffled through a few pages of the manuscript until I found what I was looking for. “Your grandfather specifically says that Garrison never accused anybody of Barclay Lodge’s murder. He just stated that he hadn’t committed it himself.”

  “Yes, well, we can’t prove anything this late in the day. My grandfather was right there on the scene. He knew the people involved, and he was actively looking into it, and he never found any evidence of guilt. It was all such a long time ago. Naturally we’re intrigued, but does it really matter, after all these years?”

  Bastet jumped onto the desk then and got interested in my tulip glass. I pulled it away from her. “I think it does matter, Michael. It’s got to be at the bottom of Barnabas’s haunting. Big, violent things were going on. The reason Phoebe’s waltz started something bad at The Bookery has to be tied up with whatever it was that had your grandfather worried. Besides, I wouldn’t want to be remembered as a murderer if I wasn’t one.”

  “I see your point. What people suspected at the time has hardened into certainty over the years. Everybody who knows the story believes that Barclay Lodge was murdered by Garrison Carteret so he could marry Phoebe and get his hands on her money. He even looked the part, a real villain from a gaslight melodrama, complete with the black mustache. Look in the center drawer of the desk.”

  I opened the drawer and took out a file of copy-paper photographs.

  “I took them at the Historical Society today,” he told me. “Just shot them with my cell phone and printed them out when I got home.”

  “You were busy today,” I said, glancing through them. Barclay Lodge had been conventionally handsome in a negative way. He’d had curly blond hair and very pale eyes that looked colorless in the studio portrait.

  But it was the shot of Garrison Carteret that really arrested me, and I sat there with print-outs in both my hands, gazing into the searing black eyes of a man who’d married an heiress, only to end his days as a vagrant. In those early shots, taken in more prosperous days, he practically sizzled. I found myself much more drawn to Garrison than to Barclay.

  “I wonder what Phoebe saw in Barclay,” I said. “He just looks insipid to me. But Garrison . . . now there was a man. A couple of generations earlier he would’ve been a blockade runner and a scallywag. He just looks dangerous.”

  “Looks can be deceiving. What you’re seeing is confidence. That was taken when things were going well for him. He’d just married into money, he’d passed the bar, and he had a thriving plantation to run. Everything was coming up roses. He was full of confidence, and it shows. It’s sad to think about how he must have looked after he hit bottom in New York.”

  “Before that, even, or he would never have deserted his wife.”

  “Yes. Even before that. People didn’t just walk away from bad marriages in those days, especially when money and property were involved. Whatever the reason, it must have been why he was a failure in New York. Something happened to take the fire out of his eyes. He changed. Look at him. Can you imagine him ending up a bum? My grandfather traced him all the way to a pauper’s grave, after he drank himself to death. At the time of his arrest, he was falling-down drunk, homeless, jobless . . . whatever made him leave Tropical Breeze must have changed him forever.”

  “A guilty secret,” I murmured. I gazed at those blazing eyes and felt so terribly sad.

  Beneath me and rising to envelop me, I felt the strains of the waltz again. I knew this man. Suddenly I was very sure I understood him. He was strong-willed, intelligent, chauvinistic. Not a man I would have liked, not a man I wanted to know. But there was no doubt whatsoever that he was a man.

  * * * * *

  I noticed that my ice cream had melted. I had set it aside to open the desk drawer and look at the photographs. I couldn’t remember if I’d taken one spoonful or two, but I wasn’t going to get any more. Very daintily, almost elegantly, Bastet was sitting on the desk flicking her little pink tongue in and out of the tulip glass.

  “At least you don’t seem to be mad at me anymore,” I said idly.

  She immediately looked up and glared at me.

  Chapter 16

  “Phoebe wasn’t a very pretty lady,” I remarked. “Plain. That’s the best you can say.”

  Wanda and I were having tea again the next morning, at her little kitchen table. I had expected sirens in the night, or at least a frantic phone call from Wanda. Perhaps a quick call from Teddy wanting to know where his Austin-Healy was. But I hadn’t heard a peep, and when I walked the few blocks between Michael’s house and Wanda’s, she met me at the door and invited me in as if nothing in particular was going on.

  She had chosen to serve in the cups from the estate sale again. A good old mug from Walt Disney World would’ve made me happier, but there was something about the Collingwood china that seemed to fit in Wanda’s world. She said Teddy was out in the garage, feeling the vibes from Alison’s car, but it was more probable that he was looking at it and wondering if he would look too much like a blue-collar dad driving around in it. That would never do. And if the neighbors were suspicious of him, seeing him driving Alison’s car might bring the bunko squad down on his head.

  “Yes, she was rather plain, if the portrait at the Historical Society is anything to go by,” Wanda said. “I was curious enough to go over and have a look at it one day. I’ve never been inside their house, of course, and I never met Phoebe in the flesh, but the portrait makes her look rather, um, plain.”

  “What about Ginny?” I asked. “Does she take after her grandmother?”

  “Yes. She has nice hair, blond like yours, but when you get close enough to look into her face, it’s, well, plain. Her father, too. He looks very much like Phoebe’s portrait. Poor Robin. About the only time I ever saw him was when he was in his yard, enjoying the weather. They have a nice patio set back there, but you almost never see them using it. And they don’t take care of the flower garden anymore. Still, Robin seemed to enjoy it. Now he doesn’t even have that, since she moved him into the nursing home.”

  I got up to look out her sink window into the Carteret’s yard. Ginny’s garden looked like it had always been a half-hearted effort, and now was just plain ragged.

  “Years ago they kept it nice, but now look at it,” Wanda said. “I suppose they couldn’t afford a gardener, but the whole second floor of the house overlooks the backyard, and it’s all windows up there. You’d think even if they didn’t want to use the yard, they’d take care of it so they could enjoy the view from the windows.”

  She’d come up to stand beside me, and she reached to the windowsill and picked up one of her knickknacks. “I got this at Girlfriend’s. It’s my favorite.”

  I took a closer look. She had a lot of cute little figurines on the sill, but this one looked almost like a piece of jewelry. It was an enamel sea turtle, inset with crystals.

  “How pretty,” I said, taking it from her for a closer look. “Did you get anything from the estate sale we had after Vesta Cadbury died?”

  “No. I wanted to, but I was down with a summer cold at the time, and Alison wasn’t interested in that kind of thing.”

  “That’s too bad. Most of
it was from her Egyptian collection, and people always find that kind of thing fascinating.”

  “Yes. I do too. What people believe is important, I think. It’s funny how you can get comfort out of any belief system, even somebody else’s. The fact that people have trusted and believed in it gives it power, somehow. All I know about the Egyptians is the usual stuff you see in the movies, but still, I’m sure you have some little good luck charms of your own, things that once belonged to Vesta. I wish I had.”

  “I have a cat pendant that belonged to her.”

  I had picked it up and looked at it that very morning as I was getting dressed, but for some reason, I hadn’t put it on. It was as if it had lost its magic. It didn’t help that my cat, Bastet, had been glaring at me from the bed at the time. I looked at her and dropped the pendant and chain back into my jewelry box. I usually don’t wear much jewelry anyway. But the incident seemed odd to me, now that I thought about it.

  “A cat? Is it a god?”

  “Yes. The goddess Bastet. In ancient times, each city in Egypt had its own god protector, and Bastet protected a city called Bubastis. There were many gods, all with different powers and roles in the grand scheme of life. I suppose they were a little like our patron saints.”

  She nodded. “Somebody to pray to when you don’t know what else to do. Just somebody who’ll listen.”

  The way she said it made me realize how helpless she had felt since her daughter had disappeared. No wonder she’d been happy to let Teddy stay with her, and wanted me near, too, even though we were strangers. We were just people who wanted to help, and that’s what she needed. She hadn’t mentioned any living relatives, and didn’t seem close to her neighbors. I wanted to say something soothing, but I knew I couldn’t make any promises.

  She slowly set the turtle figurine back on the windowsill where it sparkled at us, and before I could think of what to say, the doorbell rang. We looked at one another.

  “Are you expecting anybody?”

  “It must be Edson Darby-Deaver, checking in on us. I’ll go let him in.”

  I was just about to sit down at the table again when I heard a man’s voice, and it wasn’t Ed’s.

  I waited, interested, while Wanda brought him inside and said something about introducing him to me. The man who walked in was a well-built, tall man in his sixties with mild blue eyes and thinning blond hair brushed straight back from a good forehead. Despite his rugged Florida tan, he had fine, almost aristocratic features. He was eyeing me with open skepticism.

  “There she is,” Wanda said as she came in behind him. “Taylor, this is my next-door neighbor, Clay Brownlee.”

  “Hello, Clay,” I said. Like every woman first meeting a man, I wondered if I should offer to shake hands, but from the look on his face, he wasn’t interested in gestures of friendship.

  “Sit down and I’ll get you some tea,” Wanda said, and she bustled into the kitchen. “Or would you rather have coffee?”

  “Nothing for me, thanks,” he drawled.

  She went ahead and put the kettle on anyway.

  He took a seat, slowly, like a gunslinger who wanted to keep his back to the wall and his eyes on the door.

  “So you catch ghosts, huh?” he said drippingly.

  “No, I catch strays. I run an animal shelter. I stay away from ghosts as much as possible.”

  “I must have been mistaken,” he said, not taking his eyes off me. “You’re Taylor Verone? The one with the cat that catches ghosts? You’re with that Edson guy, the one with the reality show.”

  “I have nothing to do with the reality show. Ed and I are just friends.”

  “Just friends, huh?” he said quietly.

  At this auspicious moment, Teddy Force entered the kitchen from the back door and announced that his paranormal sweep of the garage was complete and he had good news: there was no ghostly infestation, and the car wasn’t possessed.

  Clay paused a beat, looked from Teddy to me, raised his eyebrows and said, “Friend of yours?”

  * * * * *

  Teddy came in and explained himself to Clay while I thought about ways to slip out of there without being noticed. You never realize how ridiculous your situation has become until you view it through a newcomer’s eyes. I could see Clay’s disbelief turning into certainty, and I found myself agreeing with him. Teddy did look like a con man hoping to take advantage of a helpless old lady, and by association, so did I.

  “And just how much are these psychotropic services of yours going to cost Wanda?”

  “Paranormal,” Teddy said. “Not psychotropic. Whatever that is.”

  “You’re not charging her anything, are you Teddy?” I said quickly.

  “What?” Teddy turned to me, then looked back at Clay. “Oh, heck no. My colleagues and I never charge for our services. We’re not in it for the money. We’re blessed with the ability to help, and we do it purely for the good of mankind. Anybody who needs us just has to ask. Why, are you having problems too?”

  Clay stuck to the money theme. “But you do accept donations?”

  “Donations?”

  “From grateful customers. Like Wanda, here.”

  By then Wanda had served out tea and taken a seat. “Now, Clay, don’t be so suspicious. I appreciate it, but Teddy and Taylor are only here to help, and they aren’t going to take advantage of me.”

  “You’re in a vulnerable state right now,” Clay said directly to Wanda. “You’re grieving, and you want answers. But you have to understand that there are some people in the world that you just can’t trust, even if they’re telling you things you want to believe.”

  “What kind of donations?” Teddy asked in his most confused voice. “You mean, for instance, a car they don’t need any more?”

  “Oh, Teddy, I’m sorry I didn’t think of it before. You can use Alison’s car until yours is delivered, if you like.”

  “Oh, thanks, but I wasn’t hinting. My car should be here today, or tomorrow at the latest. Right, Taylor?”

  “I did not call your garage, Teddy. And for the last time, you can’t use my SUV.”

  Clay hunkered down and told Wanda sternly, “You will not give Alison’s car to these people. If I see that kind of thing going on here, I’m calling the cops.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t going to give it to him!”

  “I don’t want it,” Teddy said grandly. “It was just an example. And FYI, bud, I don’t take donations, either, cars or boats or anything else. Who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “A concerned neighbor.”

  “Really, Clay, I’m all right.”

  “Teddy, I think you should just rent a car,” I said.

  “Handle it however you see fit,” he said breezily. “Just get me some wheels.”

  “Teddy, I am not your secretary! If you want to rent a car, go ahead and do it. Better yet, work on hiring a new assistant. You need one.”

  He drew himself up and stared at me. “That was cruel, Taylor. How could you? When you know how broken I am over Lily. It’s an act of will, holding myself together like this, and I’m only doing it for Wanda’s sake. But I’m pretty close to the edge right now. Any little thing could push me over.”

  I apologized profusely, adding, “I wasn’t referring to that. I’m just saying, you’re used to having somebody running around taking care of the details for you, and I can’t be that person. You need to hire another producer.”

  “And I will. When I’m ready. When I’m no longer . . . fragile.”

  Clay was watching all this with growing consternation. It was dawning on him that the man he was throwing down with was a lightweight, maybe even a harmless idiot. “You’re really doing this for free?” he asked.

  “I won’t take another cookie, if it’s not freely given,” Teddy said.

  “Oh, Teddy, don’t be silly. You can have all the cookies you want.”

  Clay looked at me. “So what are you guys doing here? And why is this man suddenly living in her house?”


  “Wanda’s nervous,” I began. “She feels a presence. She even hired a private investigator when Alison went missing, didn’t you, Wanda?”

  “You mean Ed?”

  “No, I mean a real P.I., Rita Garnett.”

  “I never hired Rita,” she said. “Why would you think that?”

  I gazed at her, dumbfounded, and tried to figure out how to cover my gaffe.

  “I hired Rita Garnett,” Clay said. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  I looked at him helplessly.

  “Oh,” Wanda said, apparently just as surprised as I was. “Oh, how kind of you Clay. You hired somebody to find Alison?”

  “I wanted her found just as much as you did.”

  “And now that you know she’s dead, you want her killer found,” Teddy stated. “Good man.”

  Clay slowly turned his head to take Teddy in again. He didn’t seem to know what to think about him now.

  “So while your investigator tries to find Alison’s killer, I have Teddy and Taylor here to try to find out who’s haunting me.”

  As slowly as before, Clay turned to look at Wanda. In a quiet, almost tender voice, he said, “Nobody’s haunting you, Wanda. You’re just lonely and shocked about Alison. I’m begging you, don’t let these people swindle you. They may not want money, but this guy’s got a TV show, and he’s getting all set to make a fool of you just to further his career.”

  “But I really am being haunted,” Wanda insisted. “It’s not just a feeling of menace, or something I see moving out of the corner of my eye when there’s nothing there. It’s real. Strange things have been going on since my daughter went missing, and I’ve got real, solid proof. Come with me; I’ll show you.”

  Chapter 17

  Even I was caught off-guard.

  I looked at Teddy and he looked at me, and Clay ignored both of us and got up, sighing, to follow Wanda to the back door.

  “What’s she talking about?” I whispered to Teddy.

  “I don’t know. She hasn’t confided,” he said loftily, hurt. “All she said was what you heard her say yesterday. Something about feeling a presence.”